If someone on your team can let themselves into a tenant's apartment, you're not screening them like an office hire. You're screening them like someone who's about to hold a house key. That's the whole difference.
Maintenance techs, leasing agents, and property managers routinely get unsupervised access to private homes: master keys, alarm codes, sometimes a garage code taped inside a lockbox. A resident isn't always home when the tech shows up. Nobody's watching. That access is the job, and it's also the risk.
An office hire who turns out to be a bad fit costs you time and maybe some awkward messages to HR. A maintenance hire who turns out to be a bad fit can walk into someone's bedroom while they're at work. That's not a hypothetical. That's literally what the key is for.
So "we already ran a background check" isn't a good enough answer for these roles. The real question is whether you ran the right check for what this specific job actually exposes people to.
Start with a criminal background check that goes deeper than your standard hire. You're looking specifically for anything tied to theft, burglary, or violence against a person, not just "any record at all." An old low-level charge and a burglary conviction are not the same risk. Treating them the same is lazy screening.
If the role involves driving between properties, which most maintenance tech roles do, add a motor vehicle record check. This isn't optional flavor. Someone driving a company vehicle between units, sometimes with a passenger or equipment, needs a clean enough driving history that you're not stacking liability on top of liability.
Employment verification matters more here too. A leasing agent's resume claim about managing hundreds of units is worth confirming. They're about to be the face of your company to prospective residents, with access to lease files that hold people's Social Security numbers and bank details.
A leasing agent who never enters an occupied unit alone has a different risk profile than a maintenance tech with a master key. Don't run the exact same package on both just because it's easier to standardize. Match the check to what the job actually touches: keys, cash, resident data, or all three.
I'd rather see a property management company run a sharper, more targeted check on the roles that actually carry risk than a generic check on everyone that misses what matters. That's not more expensive. It's just aimed better.
A bad hire with home access isn't just an HR problem. It's the kind of thing that ends up in a police report and then in a lawsuit naming your company for negligent hiring. Employers have been held liable before for handing someone access without doing reasonable checking first.
And even short of that worst case, the reputational hit is real. A property management company's whole pitch to residents and owners is trust in your space. One bad incident with a maintenance worker undoes years of that, fast. It's the story residents tell every new tenant who asks about the building.
If the role touches money, say someone who collects rent checks or has access to security deposit accounts, consider a credit check too. Not every property manager needs this. But if cash or accounts are part of the job, it's worth asking about.
Rules on what you can ask candidates, and when, vary by state, especially around criminal history and ban-the-box laws. I'm not going to pretend I know every state's rule off the top of my head, and neither should you. Check your state's actual requirements before you finalize a screening policy, not after.